THE STORY OF COSTUMES 



STEAM AND ELECTRICITY IN FACTORIES 



For many years after ready-made clothing had 

 become a standard factory-product, about the only 

 mechanical aids to the garment-maker were the sewing- 

 machines. Garments were still cut out by the time- 

 honored shears, pressed with old-fashioned flat-irons, 

 and buttonholes worked and buttons sewed on by 

 hand. About 1870, however, the first mechanical 

 substitute for shears came into use. This was in the 

 form of a machine carrying great knife-blades which 

 worked like saws back and forth, through several 

 thicknesses of clothing. These first straight-bladed 

 cutting-machines were quickly supplanted by ma- 

 chines made with circular disk blades, cutting like 

 buzz-saws, using a knife-edge instead of teeth. With 

 these machines almost any number of thicknesses 

 of cloth might be cut at one time, a hundred pieces 

 being turned out as quickly as a single one could 

 be cut by the old hand-method. If a hundred sleeve- 

 pieces of the same size were to be cut, a hundred pieces 

 of cloth were clamped together, the pattern laid out, 

 and the cloth sent to the cutting-knife. A few rapid 

 passages of the blade, and a hundred sleeve-pieces 

 were ready for the sewing-machines. A single work- 

 man controlled the machine that cut from fifty to a 

 hundred times faster than the hand- workman, and at 

 the end of the day he had neither aching fingers, arms, 

 nor shoulders, as in the case of a hand-workman. 



Another machine that came quickly into use was the 

 buttonhole cutter. This could turn out the work not at 



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